United Nations: India has taken strong objection to a Pakistani resolution seeking to involve UN Secretary-General in bilateral issues and calling for military balance between States in "regions of tension".

Ostensibly, the resolution was moved to promote confidence-building measures (CBMs) between States but, as India pointed out, it distorted the meaning and accepted use of the term to bring in extraneous issues.

"CBMs cannot be a subterfuge to get a whole lot of non-parties to a dispute involved in the process," its representative V Varma, Director in Disarmament Division of the External Affairs Ministry, argued.

The resolution was adopted by a United Nations committee by the lowest margin of the season by 64 votes to 47 with 38 member-States in the 191-member panel abstaining. The remaining chose to absent themselves during the vote.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany were among the nations that opposed the resolution and Russia and Canada abstained. China and Bangladesh supported it while Sri Lanka opposed it and Nepal abstained.

Pakistan had made some changes in the original draft to win over major powers but failed in its effort as the alternations did not meet the criterion set by them.

Among other things, the resolution called for the maintenance of military balance between States in the region of tension "consistent with the principle of undiminished security at the lowest level of armament" in the context of confidence-building measures.

It also asked the Secretary-General to seek views of member-States with a view to exploring "possibilities of furthering efforts towards confidence-building measures in the regional and sub-regional context, particularly in the regions of tensions".

Varma asserted that an "entirely artificial construct of 'region of tension'" is advanced to assign a role to the Secretary-General beyond what is prescribed in the world body's charter or established by practice.

Involving non-parties in a dispute, he said, is a "recipe for wrecking rather than building confidence".

It would create a "bad precedent in our deliberations, exacerbate contentious issues and knock the bottom out of the CBMs option being implemented in practice", Varma stressed.

PTI